The owner of a Virginia restaurant, The Red Hen, asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the establishment on June 22, 2018. How might this incident connect with a recent Supreme Court decision?
According to the United States Supreme Court, it’s perfectly legal for a bakery owner to choose not to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. The bakery in the case was the Masterpiece Cakeshop.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, speaking for the White House, supported the SCOTUS decision in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
“We are pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision. The First Amendment prohibits government from discriminating against the basis of religious beliefs, and the Supreme Court rightly concluded that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to show tolerance and respect for his religious beliefs. In this case and others the Department of Justice will continue to vigorously defend the free speech and religious freedom First Amendment rights,” Sanders said during a press briefing.
Given that, it was equally legal for the owner of The Red Hen restaurant, in Lexington, Virginia, to choose not to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, asked Sanders to leave not long after Sanders joined the rest of her companions. Sanders, her husband, and six others were dining in the rural restaurant. They had just started dinner and had only gotten as far as the cheese course.
According to the Washington Post, “It was important to Wilkinson, she said, that Sanders had already been served — that her staff had not simply refused her on sight. And it was important to her that Sanders was a public official, not just a customer with whom she disagreed, many of whom were included in her regular clientele.”
Sanders’ party offered to pay, but their food and beverages were on the House.
Unfortunately, on Saturday, June 23, Mike Huckabee, father of Sanders, tweeted, “Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington VA. Or you can ask for the “Hate Plate”. And appetizers are “small plates for small minds.”
Clearly, Huckabee doesn’t understand that a restaurant’s reserving the right to ask a customer to leave is perfectly acceptable.